Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an “old friend,” Mitt Romney told folks at the American Israel Public Affairs Conference in Washington Tuesday.

Rep. Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, edged in close enough at a Capitol press conference to be photographed with Netanyahu.

And Sen. Mark Kirk, who recently suffered a stroke, put out a press release and video to mark Netanyahu’s wish that the Illinois Republican would recover quickly. Kirk isn’t Jewish, but a lot of folks in his old Chicago-area House district are.

In the FourSquare of American politics, Bibi Netanyahu is the mayor of Washington this week.

“You stand with your friends not apart from them, even in a physical sense,” said Adam Sharon, a spokesman for Berman. “This is a relationship that goes back years and years, both having been at the forefront of many of the issues being discussed today.”

It was Berman who scored the Bibi coup of the day: He’s locked in a tough primary against fellow Jewish Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman in a newly redrawn Southern California district where there’s a significant base of Jewish donors and voters. It’s hard to beat standing shoulder to shoulder with the Israeli prime minister to project an image of influence in American-Israeli relations.

Sharon declined to get into Berman’s race, but noted that Netanyahu, who was educated in the United States, is “pretty much attuned to everything that’s going on here, whether it’s domestic politics or American culture.”

A day after the leaders of the two countries met at the White House, President Barack Obama’s campaign team circulated old Netanyahu testimonials to Obama as a pre-buttal to Republican presidential candidates’ Tuesday speeches to AIPAC.

“Mitt Romney has attacked the president as a ‘fair-weather’ friend of Israel,” the watch guide notes. The pushback: “When Israel’s Embassy in Cairo was attacked by protestors last year, President Obama called on Egypt to protect it and offered his support to Prime Minister Netanyahu. The next day, Netanyahu publicly thanked the President for his help, calling it ‘a decisive and fateful moment.’”

Romney and other Republican candidates have been making a play for Jewish voters who backed Obama in 2008, arguing that his foreign policy has made Israel less safe over the past three years.

“The current administration has distanced itself from Israel and visibly warmed to the Palestinian cause,” Romney charged during at video-conferenced speech to AIPAC.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can’t agree on much, but they joined arms to embrace Netanyahu for a private lunch meeting with Berman and other lawmakers who have a hand in foreign policy.

And both leaders sent out transcripts of their remarks at the joint press conference.

“Now is the time to stand together,” Boehner said. “We are here today to tell the prime minister that Congress intends to do so.”

Netanyahu tried to return some of the congressional love during his press conference on Tuesday in the Capitol.

“I don’t think there is a place anywhere else on earth where we can match the clarity, courage and wisdom than … the halls of this institution,” Netanyahu said. “I go back to Israel feeling we have great friends in Washington.”